Written by Jason Aaron and Jeph Loeb
Illustrated by Adam Kubert, Paul Mounts, Ron Garney, Jason Keith, Steve Sanders, Sotocolors, and Simone Bianchi– EXTRA-SIZED 300th ISSUE EVENT!
– An all-new, soon-to-be-classic Wolverine story starts here!
– Wolverine travels to Tokyo to confront his most dangerous enemy yet.
– And a new Silver Samurai rises to take his place… along with Wolverine’s daughter!
Hey look, Wolverine comics have reached #300! That’s a big milestone for such a little runt from Alberta, Canada who was meant to be a Hulk villain at one point. The little guy has been through a lot in the past few years, and now he gets to celebrate in an oversized anniversary issue featuring the Japan, ninja, and the return of a little known Wolverine villain named Victor Creed, who you may know better as SABRETOOTH!
Does this book have any teeth though? Read after the jump!
Too many cooks in the kitchen; it’s a term that refers to the idea that too many people working on one project might dilute the outcome of the finished work, because there were too many voices dictating what to do. Unfortunately, Wolverine falls into this overused idiom, as there are no less than 2 writers and 7 artists in this book. To their credit, each other the artists involved are very talented (whether I’m a fan of their art personally is a different story entirely, however.). But if I asked you if work by Stephen Sanders, Adam Kubert, and Ron Garney matched up well together, you’d probably say no, they don’t at all.
And they don’t. If any one of them had been the artist on their own the book would have looked great! I would argue that Adam Kubert’s pages probably looked the best of the issue, but if Steven Sanders had been the main artist, I would not have had any complaints whatsoever. Steven Sanders is one of the most underrated artists Marvel has on their roster, and he should be given more consistent work. But a few pages in Wolverine with artists whose mood do not fit with his just muddies up the look of the book and doesn’t give it the chance to have a voice that carries throughout the entire book.
The writing also suffers from the same problem, as there seem to be some communication issues between Aaron to Loeb. On its own, Aaron’s work actually stands up as a fun action comedy of sorts where everything is full of flying limbs, razor wire, and villainous jet packs. It’s a bloody madcap gore fest, with the same disregard for human life as a film like Kill Bill Vol. 1. Katanas are handed out by a Flight Attendant and arms, legs, and severed heads quite literally fall from the sky. It’s a lot of fun. However, while the art’s inconsistency fails the story Aaron is telling, the writing from Loeb’s little tiny bit seemingly undoes everything Aaron did not thirty pages earlier.
Loeb and Bianchi, who are writing the return of the character they killed four and a half years ago in Wolverine #55 (which is misleading, as that was only roughly 50 or so issues ago), told a story about as good as the last time they were writing Wolverine, pretty but not very well written. The most frustrating part of the teaser pages is that it has its own nebulous continuity, and it doesn’t’ really fit with the order that it’s presented in, outside of saying “weeks ago,’ in an attempt to shoehorn Sabretooth back into comics. Loeb reintroduces Sabretooth, but he’s already alive and well and riding a jet pack and boinking Mystique in Aaron’s yarn. The fact that they’re presented in this book as “the deadliest new couple in the Marvel Universe when they have a grown ass child in Graydon Creed is bad enough, but this kind of backwards storytelling makes trying to figure out where a book goes in the timeline a headache. Does it take place before Spider-Island or after? Why is this being told after he’s already causing havoc in the main title? Who knows? Why is Cloak tied to the top of the Empire State Building when he can teleport?
Continued belowI’m not always a fan of Bianchi’s work. His visuals look nice but have a certain sterility to them. There is more motion to his pencils, but still lacks that X factor that makes beautiful art “beautiful comic art.” He does well on covers and pin-ups, but as an interior artist, his work still leaves me wanting.
If you ignore the strange storytelling in the Loeb portion, the book is still a lot of fun, but the while Aaron is telling a great action flick, Loeb…doesn’t. I’ll probably leave Loeb’s work on the shelf, but Aaron’s is fun enough to check out at least on the racks.
Final Verdict: 6.5 – Probably would have gotten a full point higher score if the book wasn’t five bucks
